Riding the wave

Today one of our newest volunteers asked me about how I ended up working in the pregnancy crisis centre.

Yeah, long story, right? One of our mutual friends, who worked for the centre at the time of my employment came in and immediately started picking up on what I’d left out.

Everything in my life has had a purpose that leading up to this point. It’s so obvious looking back now, but it certainly wasn’t always clear at the time.

In 4 hours time I need to be up to drive to the airport and start making the journey to Basingstoke. I can’t sleep.

I was reading Angie Smith’s blog. I wasn’t expecting to see a ultrasound picture taken at 10 weeks gestation.

Yes, that was the stage of pregnancy I was at when I had it terminated.

It was a little bit of a kick in the guts to see that, I’ll admit. Sometimes I wish I could turn back the clock, and bizarrely I don’t want to turn it back to the point before she was conceived to change things in that way. Turning back the clock I wish I would have had the information, support and courage to make a different decision.

You can’t think like that though. Because if it hadn’t been for Sophie being part of my life, I wouldn’t have the wisdom and understanding I have now. The perspective I have when I meet with clients, or abortion providers is different from many of my colleagues. It’s not that I necessarily agree with the people who think it’s all ok, it’s that I get where they’re coming from…because I used to have a totally different viewpoint.

God is doing some crazy things with this work, ministry or whatever you want to call it.

Crazy in the best and in some cases, most unexpected of ways.

He is, as Sarah Chia put it earlier this year, widening my territory.

And yet, I’m not that close to God as I once was. My quiet times are um, yeah, embarrassingly few and far between. My prayer life sucks compared to what it once was. There are lots of things in my life that need sorting.

I feel like I’m just riding this wave of God…He seems to have me along for the ride whether I like or not really!

The majority of the time, I do like it. I love it. The life God has for me is never dull.

But it is sometimes tough.

Um, actually a lot of the time it is tough.

I need to get prepared - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually – as much as I can for what God has in store for 2010.

How do you do that? Answers on a postcard (or blog comment) please…

 

Feels like more than a year…

I’ve been answering some questions posed to me by the lovely Lori Wilhite about my involvement in pregnancy crisis work.

It got me reflecting back (once again) on the journey that brought me here, doing what it is that I do.

I so remember the anxiety that went into writing all about it on my blog...the amount of times I wrote and deleted posts (sometimes even after publishing them). I remember the weirdness of it just not being mentioned at smallgroup at first. I remember meeting Alastair and just not knowing what to say to someone I knew only through blogging, and him being one of the first people I mentioned that I had essentially handed in my resignation to the centre. I remember finding out that some many more folks at MBC were reading my blog than I realised – lurkers!! – and just being really nervous about how they were responding to it, and whether they thought I was a total nutter or something. Maybe don’t answer that…?!

But I also remember a few of the e-mails I got, and the comments that were left and hearing of people inspired to get involved in this work or start talking about crisis pregnancy situations and/or pregnancy loss they had experienced.

I can’t believe that it was only a year ago that I finally finished writing about it. I had intended no more than 6 posts. I wrote 14 in the end. I sure am long-winded.

How much has happened since then. How much has changed since then.

I moved back home. God (through others) talked me into staying and taking up the challenge of being ‘in charge’, not alone but doing it together with Sarah. And I went to South Africa (finally).

I wonder what will have happened by this time next year?

Pregnancy crisis in the UK: can we be the change?

We had a lovely day this morning/afternoon at our sponsored walk. The above is my fave picture of the day – me and my friend Frances standing during a brief shower looking a little daft and crazy! (not a reflection of what we’re usually like at all….ahem)

It’s been lovely the last wee while talking with others who are passionate about this work I’m involved in.

And so funny, and a little saddening to see the number who glanced at our stall last week and walked quickly on as if standing near a charity involved in pregnancy related stuff is catching or something. Sigh.

You know, most people in this work have amazing stories of how they got involved. So many stories of women and men who’ve been affected by unplanned pregnancy, pregnancy loss and infertility. Stories of how family members having abortions has affected them. Stories of God’s healing and redemption. Stories of abuse. Stories of how they see these issues playing out amongst clients and patients in their professional work life as doctors, nurses, social workers, community education workers, pastors, midwives…

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know someone who has gone through pregnancy crisis, abortion or miscarriage.

Last week was lovely as I got to meet a woman not much older than me who is going to be a centre manager of a new pregnancy crisis centre down in England. Both of us going ‘man, it’s so good to find someone our age in this work’. It’s great to have ALL generations involved in this, but the reality at the moment is that the number of 20s/30s involved in the UK is very low.

Also looking at a map of centres on the CareConfidential website we have discovered something we’ve nicknamed the ‘Hadrian’s Wall Gap‘. Notice the sparse number of centres in the North and in Wales…?

I’m happy to report that I know of 3 services that will be opening in the not-so-distant future in Scotland.

I wonder if you live in a place where there isn’t a pregnancy crisis centre, and if maybe God is speaking to you about it…?

I find it so strange how the church seems to deal with so many of our ‘big’ issues in society – drugs, homelessness, alcohol, debt, marriage breakdown, youth crime… but not anything to do with sex and relationships. It’s like we’re too embarrassed to talk about it, we don’t want things to get too messy, we don’t want to offend or seem judgmental or uncompassionate.

And yet everyday the abortion rate gets higher. The STI rates get higher. People start sexual relationships younger. Women turn to abortion because they lack other options because they don’t have the support they need to continue with their pregnancies.

It’s so easy to judge and be noble in our beliefs when we don’t know the whole story.

It’s so easy to ignore when it’s not in our face, because it’s so often kept a secret.

People still ask me why I shared my story last year. Well I believe it’s about time people know what goes on, how it can affect people, and do you know what…I made a decision a long time ago to be silent no more. Because silence just makes it easier to ignore so we can pretend the issue isn’t there or isn’t such a big deal.

It is there.

In our workplace

In our schools

In our universities and colleges

In our places of worship

In our communities

Can we be the change, the answer, the compassionate family and rebuild community we seem to have lost with ever evolving levels of technology and culture of society?

I wanted to talk about surfing…

…but Friday’s bombshell is still hanging over us.

Someone asked me what we are in plenty of at our centre.

Truthfully? That’s a very difficult question to answer right now.

I think the only thing we have in plenty are the lovely shiny new leaflets that have been great and I’ve been sending out to lots of health centres!

Ever since I’ve been there, there has been so much need, and so very little support. Well, it seems like it anyway.

I was so excited in November when we went down to a conference with pregnancy crisis centre trustees, church leaders, volunteers, staff from all over the UK. I felt so refreshed, so full of inspiration and ideas. It was the first time Sarah just really felt maybe she was to come work at the centre, and we sat in my room just writing all our ideas, our vision, the things we wanted to improve on.

Since Friday I feel like I’ve failed the charity.

I confess I’m a little angry too. We have so much need and I wonder if we’re the only ones who care. I know that’s not true, but it can feel like it a lot of the time.

We need trustees (specifically a treasurer, someone with legal background, someone with a medical background, someone who is good at fundraising, someone with a pastoral/ministerial background would all be extremely useful)

We need volunteers – not just for counselling, but befrienders, people help with fundraising events, people to be on our youth and schools team. Someone who is good at publicity – at the moment I make all our posters and newsletters and though I know what is good and bad, I’m not great with computers to do it!

We need finanical support.

Advertising costs money. Renting the building we use as our office space, our counselling space, our telephone line, our salaries, training for the staff and volunteers…all cost money.

Sarah and I  are trying to do  2 full time jobs in 32 hours per week. We would love to work full time for the pregnancy crisis centre.

Unplanned pregnancy and abortion is a massive issue. Abortion affects about 1 in 4 women in the UK. Which means its affecting about 1 in 4 men in the UK also.

Its crunch time really.

I had a dream that every person facing an unplanned pregnancy in Scotland would have at leaast 1 hour of pregnancy crisis counselling before coming to a decision about the about what option they wanted to take.

I had a dream of the church providing a safe haven for vulnerable women and their children.

I had a dream of the church supporting men and women to parent their children.

I had a dream of seeing men and women who have been struggling with pregnancy loss  find healing and restoration and being loved and supported in that. Particularly those who’ve been carrying a secret burden.

Today I wonder if all those dreams are just pipe dreams.

I wonder what’s going to happen while I’m in South Africa (I’m not sure if there could be a worse time to be there for 2 weeks!).

I wonder if I lack faith. I wonder if I’m just really incompetent. I wonder if all the sacrifices I have made (and continue to make) are worth it.

My heart says yes. It is all worth it.

My head says ‘What are you doing, are you totally mad, you crazy girl?!’

Sigh. Deep sigh.

Compartmentalise

These are just a handful of my synapsing thoughts as I try and prepare for the funeral tomorrow. Seeing family that I once saw all the time, but now haven’t seen for years.

I don’t really deal with the whole grieving thing too well. But then, who does? I’m reminded of this even more over the last 2 weeks. 

I have this ability to compartmentalise like you wouldn’t believe. I just kind of get on with life as normal going through the motions feeling nothing really, hitting some self-destruct buttons a long the way until one day the world comes crashing down.

Yep.

I might cry when it happens – usually because of shock and anger more than anything else. And then….nothing….for months, and months. 

It’s for this reason, I’ve never once cried at a funeral. Not even of some of the people closest to me in my life.

One of my clearest memories in the days after my abortion was when I was almost brought to tears as I was doubled over in physical pain. My boyfriend (at the time) just fell apart and cried. I just couldn’t. I just smiled and joked, stared into space or snapped at people. I just couldn’t do the whole grieving thing. It was my choice, and what did I lose?

A summer of pushing people away, months and months of hitting the self-destruct button (which almost got me pregnant for a second time…) I remember the night it all came crashing down, as I fell into my friends shoulder just crying….I want my baby back…

I’m not sure what I’d do now if I came across my 17 year old self in that drunken almost catatonic state.

I wonder if there’s anything you can do for someone in that kind of state other than to just pray while they get through it, and be there to hold them afterward. Sure, you could sedate them, but looking back I think I needed to go through that to vent all the locked up emotional turmoil.

There’s certain things that my brain just cannot handle. 

There are so many questions I want answers to, and at the same time I’m not sure if I want to know the answers to.

I kind of wish that I could be more ‘normal’ in the whole grieving thing…I mean who doesn’t cry at a funeral? Who sits doing coursework in the library in between long hours in the ICU? Who goes round to their friends to watch ER the night their father is fighting for his life in hospital? Who goes back to work two days after having their pregnancy surgically terminated?

Apparently I do.

And yet do you want to know what brought me close to tears this week? Neela Rasgotra leaving County General.

Go figure.

Abortion in the church

I gathered with people working in pregnancy crisis centres from all over Scotland in Stirling today.

We had an amazing couple who run one of the first UK PCCs come to speak and give seminars.

This statistic though shocked even me.

The abortion rate within the church is almost exactly the same as it is outwith the church.

I wonder how many pastors realise that.

I wonder how many people are in need of healing relating to pregnancy loss.

If you are someone who works as a pastor or leads up a pastoral ministry, can I recommend a book to you? It’s not heavy, but I think it would encourage and inspire you.

You can buy it on Amazon, but I can probably get you a copy for £5 (if you live in the UK).

Texas meets Scotland

Yesterday while I was sitting fighting with Microsoft Word to create a sponsorship form for an upcoming fundraiser, I got a call from an American woman. I was momentarily confused until I recalled a conversation I’d had with someone from the charity I work for from a couple of weeks ago about the possibility of this phone call…

Anyway, this woman was visiting Europe from Texas, and as well as having trained doctors in Neuro-Psychology in some of the USA’s top medical schools, she has worked directing abortion recovery programmes in the USA as well.

And she wanted to meet myself and my colleague to hear about the work we do in this city and the work that goes on in pregnancy crisis centres in Scotland, as she was stopping in Edinburgh for a couple of days.

So off we went to meet her for a meal at the hotel where she was staying. We shared our stories of where we’d grown up and how we’d got into doing the work we had done. Where that passion had come from. 

Yes, this meant I shared a good chunk of the story that most of you already know from when I shared the whole thing (pretty much) on my blog last year. I also ended up having to explain why my Dad and I haven’t spoken for a year, as one of the questions I was asked was about how my parents reacted when they found out that I’d had an abortion.*

Yep, I probably came off as a totally crazy person I bet she wished she’d never met.

It was a really educating, encouraging and interesting 3 hour discussion we had. You know, while sampling different desserts to see which one we voted the best.

A few things really struck me…

1. How we can be from such different places yet God finds ways of bringing people together. We don’t know why we were brought together that evening and yet we connected almost immediately. We didn’t know really anything about each other apart from our first names, and yet there were no awkward silences.

2. The cultures of the USA and UK are so very different when it comes to issues of Christian faith and values. Most people in the USA are surrounded by it in their culture. Here it is not looked at very much in schools. We would never teach about abstinence in sex education. I’ve never seen positive stories about faith and miracles in the news like I’ve seen about blogging friends in the US. If I offered to pray for someone here or said ‘God bless you’ I’d be being very politically incorrect! Pastor K. summed up what it’s like here pretty well at Q last year (though I’m worried if people don’t see MBC as being church!!)

3. I was slightly surprised to hear that in the USA church pastors don’t think there are women struggling with abortion and pregnancy loss in their church. And I thought it was just in the UK this myth existed. It’s not just the women who were pregnant. It can be the partner, the mother, the father, the sister, the brother, the daughter… 

Let’s face it, if I didn’t work in pregnancy crisis centre and hadn’t shared my story on my old blog last year, would any of you readers (who go to the same church as me) know I struggled with it?

I don’t many of the folks who go to the same church as me, but I know within the congregation are at least 4 people who have struggled after them or someone close to them having an abortion. The only reason I know is because of private conversations we’ve bizarrely happened to have had. Usually because they find out what I do for a living! 

Come to a CareConfidential conference and you’ll find 100s more…

Most of the time (not ALL the time) these issues get talked about as a ‘outside world’ issue or a prolife campaign issue. Scotland has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates and abortion rates in Europe. 

4. The strength of the pain comes through in people’s silence.

And things crumble for unknown, unexplained reason…

5. We prayed for each other before parting ways. In the middle of the lobby with businessmen sitting nearby on their laptops. Ha ha! My memory of Joan’s prayer for me was something like this…

Take all the hurts and pains she has gone through and sew them together to make a beautiful tapestry…

It was the one point where I came closest to tears last night. That’s been my own prayer since the night I first properly came before God and asked for his forgiveness and said ‘Ok…I want you to be Lord of my life. I’m surrendering it all to you’. I was so angry for all the hurt and anguish I’d gone through, the secrets I’d had to keep (and am still keeping now I’m back here…sigh). I don’t for any stretch of the imagination think that I had the worst life and I know people have gone through far worse than I. To this day, I don’t know how I’ve made it through. How I got a university degree. But I wanted God to use me to help others. There’s nothing worse than going through pain alone. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worse than the pain itself. 

I’m not sure what will come of our meeting together. I know that something will, and all will be revealed in time.

*My Mum knows now, my Dad doesn’t for a whole variety of reasons.

Backtracking

“The thing about losing a child is that you do not just lose them once, but you go on experiencing the loss of what they would have been”

-Sarah Williams

So I’ve been feeling rubbish, and today I stayed on in the centre long after I could have gone home. I have overtime from last week, and had done all the work I needed to do today. I ended up lying across one of the couches in the office and reading The Shaming of the Strong. I’ve read it before, and it’s very moving and challenging read. 

There’s a lot of truth in that quote, and to be honest I still often don’t feel I have the right to think like that when it was my decision to lose my own child. 

The thing is that pregnancy was semi-wanted. It was back when I thought pregnancy was all bumps and romance and knew nothing of the backache, indigestion, swelling, cramps and complications. 

We talked a lot about having kids,  what they would be like, whether they’d be girls or boys (like we had control over it, ha ha!), how I’d ever deal with morning sickness, what we’d name them, how we’d tell our parents. Particularly my father who at the time was extremely protective of me and tended to treat me like I was 8 years old.

You remember that scene in Father of the Bride when she tell her Dad she’s met the love of her life and she got engaged? 

So when I got asked what I wanted for my birthday, I jokingly said ‘I want to have a baby with you!’ 

Be careful what you wish for, eh? Because I got my wish.

I didn’t believe it for weeks. We were careful. We were generally pretty responsible and known for being so. I was amongst the top students in the year. I didn’t sleep around. Teenage pregnancy can’t happen to kids like me, right?

Wrong.

Making that decision, the one I thought I had to make to protect me, my boyfriend and to prevent history repeating itself broke my heart. 

God has spent the last (almost) 8 years fixing it. And while it was just after my 17th birthday I got pregnant, it was a couple of weeks before my 22nd I got told I might struggle to have children, and it was on my 22nd birthday that my friend dropped the bomb that she now knew of the abortion myself and her brother had kept from everyone in our families (except his parents) for so long. 

Anniversary reactions with any loss are normal. And for me it’s things like Mother’s Day and the first day of school that give me that little pang of ‘what would it have been like if…‘ Seriously, you could drive yourself crazy doing it.

For me it’s a fleeting moment, and I don’t worry about it because I know how far I’ve come. There was a time where I was wailing my head off on the floor of a church, and sobbing my head into my friend’s shoulder, and screaming profanities on the campsite of a Christian festival. I had to do that before I could accept it, let go, and move on.

But of course, there are hours when I ‘backtrack’ for a short time and it’s like grieving again, although not quite so intensely or for nearly as long as the first time round.

And I think because the other losses and shocks that have all come around this time of year, I’m having some extended moping time right now! Last month was stressful, tough and I know I’m not in the place where I want to be.

I’m seriously not looking forward to Sunday as I naively wait for the birthday messages that I know won’t come but still hope for, and anticipate my mother’s rant that they didn’t. 

Having said all of that… for once, thankfully, I trust God is going to get me through any unexpected emotions or challenges that may come along the way.

Crisis pregnancy and abortion

Cartoon made by ASBOJon

I’m trying to prepare for a training day for medics that I’m doing in partnership with the Christian Medical Fellowship in April.

After the seminar that my friend JG and I gave at the Scottish CMF Conference in November, some of the GPs and medical students spoke to us asking if we would consider doing some training for tools they can use in patient consultations.

Although ideally, it would be good for them all to do the 50 hour course that CareConfidential offer, we realise that lots of them don’t have the time to do that. So we’re hoping to teach them a few things to help them improve communication with patients in pregnancy crisis situations.

There is going to be some role play activity, so I’m now sitting trying to write some case study scenarios to use.

I had to take a breather from it though. One word rings out in my head so much as I read the stories on the CareConfidential website. Sacrifice.

I’ve heard and read so many people talk and judge and be so harsh on hearing that women have chosen to have their pregnancies terminated. But more often than not these women have made decisions to sacrifice for others. They get burdened with the secret that they once got pregnant to protect their family. They know they can’t afford to have another child and want to protect their other children. Sometimes its just because they don’t want their unborn to be born into an abusive home or with a father who doesn’t want them. Sometimes its because the medical risks of continuing the pregnancy are so high and they want to protect their existing family – sacrificing one for the others.

It’s these women, the ones who didn’t actually want to have an abortion but felt they had to do it, that keeps me going with the work I do.

It results in broken women. Quite often suffering in secret.

Yes, my own personal beliefs would come under the label of ‘pro-life‘. But I’m not in the business of saving babies or deciding what another person should do with their body. That’s not within my control anyway.

I am in the business of educating, listening and showing compassion though. I hope that I can be used as a tool to bring healing while I’m doing that too.

I’d also like to be the first to say on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ to the women and men who have been shown more judgment than compassion from the church: I’m sorry.

Responsibility

So…

Last Sunday and Monday it felt like everything I touched was going wrong. Ever have those days when you wonder if you’ve got some kind of curse of stupidity as you feel like you’re just constantly screwing up?

Ok, must just be me then!

Suffice to say, walking into a very key and important work meeting on Monday night, I was really down on myself after 24 hours of ‘everything going wrong’. I was worried it was going to be a tough meeting. I was more than pleasantly surprised and truly thankful that it was completely the opposite!

Things are changing in the world of BK. First of all, it’s possible that I’m going to be doing less hours in the pregnancy crisis centre, but my friend and I are going to be jointly co-ordinating the project from March 2nd.

Scary biscuits!

It’s going to be a challenge. And we’re going to be looking for support from our family, friends, churches and more… in all sorts of ways. We’ve been given so much responsibility in our hands. The future of the centre, the pastoral care, support and supervision of volunteers, the safety of both clients and our volunteers, keeping our project ‘in the black’, educating people and raising awareness of why the issues we are dealing with need addressed, building trust with individuals, agencies and organisations around our region.

At the moment I’m working with a graphic designer who is producing some new publicity materials for our centre, taking my first steps into post-abortion support (after completing my training in October last year), trying to organise a training day for medical students and junior doctors which is due to take place in April, and trying to think up some fun fundraising events since the Great Scottish Walk is not going ahead this year.

If you would like to support us in any way, or find out more about what it is that we do, please contact me: brunettekoala[AT]hotmail[DOT]com